Farewell, Snitch

A couple of literary postmortems of Christopher Hitchens that are must-reads — see Katha Pollitt and Michael Lind.

Hitchens was one of those people who seem to have become famous and admired and sought-after without actually doing anything to deserve it. He was the Kim Kardashian of punditry, an opinionated gasbag who passed for an intellectual.

As Lind writes, Snitch really was a gossip columnist who specialized in sensational trash talk. Although he pretended to be an iconoclast, he earned his bread and butter by speaking for the id of some elite consensus, whether neocons or atheists. He was a shallow and sloppy thinker who spoke more from bias than reason, but his fans loved him because he expressed their own biases so very strongly and authoritatively.

More Jeb!

Do read Draft Jeb! by Charles Pierce. Then come back here.

Jeb — ‘scuse me, Jeb! — actually scares me more than the clowns currently running. Yeah, he’s as corrupt and hypocritical as the rest of the bushies, but he cleans up well. Unlike the other presidential hopefuls, he doesn’t have visible bats flying around his head.

Also unlike the current candidates, he would enjoy the benefit of the unified GOP establishment and its propaganda machine. Americans will hear nothing but what a great guy he is. The biggest challenge to his campaign will be keeping little brother George locked in a basement until after the election.